


Ashes

by zulu



Category: House M.D.
Genre: 08-01, F/M, for:bironic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-19
Updated: 2008-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-02 01:07:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zulu/pseuds/zulu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One time House and Stacy smoked together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bironic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bironic/gifts).



The scent of smoke has mixed in her memory with desperate crying jags. Stacy inhales, swallowing down great jagged sobs, and bites back any sound she might make. The moment she lets out so much as a gasp, she will start screaming, she will shatter the mirror where her pale, broken face stares back at her. She's hiding, and Greg can't know, so she takes another drag and holds the smoke in until she's choking on it, her throat burning, her eyes watering. Her breathing and the cigarette between her fingers tremble raggedly, and she won't let out a sound.

Her breath escapes in a rush when the door crashes open. Greg meets her eyes in the mirror. He's shaking, sweating, barely upright on his crutches. Stacy's caught between pitching the cigarette in the toilet, or taking it deliberately between her lips. Greg grabs her wrist, nearly toppling over with the move. He's gripping hard enough to make her tendons ache. He plucks the cigarette out of her hand. Stacy wants to explain, and she never wants to explain herself to him again. She glares at him and pulls her hand back, thinking--and not caring--that he might fall.

Stacy knows he used to smoke. They traded quitting stories; she remembers they once lay in each other's arms, slippery, sated, Greg soft inside her but staying close, and they laughed about how it was the only thing that could possibly make the sex any better. It's nothing like that, as Stacy watches his eyes squint from the burn of the smoke, the pull of his lips as he draws in, the easy, perfect way he lets the smoke thread out the corners of his mouth.

The cigarette's down to the filter. Greg flicks it into the sink, shakes his head, and then he's limping away, not saying a thing, leaving the bathroom--her sanctuary--heavy with the weight of his judgment, his disgust. And Stacy knows she can't live here anymore, not now that he's filled every last inch of their space with a pain that isn't only his.


End file.
